This application discloses improvements to U.S. Pat. No. 5,793,842 issued to Jerry R. Schloemer and Leo J. Aubel. U.S. Pat. No. 5,793,842 is incorporated herein by specific reference thereto. While the entire patent ""842 is incorporated herein by reference, FIGS. 1-11 and the associated description are particularly pertinent to this invention. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,793,842 a method of connecting a call to a desired one of several drops (destinations) was disclosed. An originating mobile unit contacts an originating base site to set up a call. The originating base site then routes the call towards the desired destination. Included in this patent were the steps of combining route segments (links) between nodes (base sites) to make a longer route that would connect an initializing base thru one or more nodes to a desired drop or exchange dependent upon the final call destination. Then, when a call is originated, the routing tables present in the nodes would route the call to the desired destination thru one or more nodes. Signal to interference tests were used to assign interference free channels in both the mobile to base and base to base communications. Because the routing literature, refers to nodes, and the cellular radio literature refers to base sites, and the functionality of the two technologies is combined, the terms xe2x80x9cbasexe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cnodexe2x80x9d will be used to refer to the same functional piece of equipment.
The invention herein describes a system and method of wireless call routing between various cell sites such that the optimum route back to one of several exchanges is chosen. Novel systems and methods of node design, antennae selection, and switching to selected drops are described.